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Jessica Savitch/Rob France, WBBF Rochester | June, 1967

Here’s a slice of 1960s upstate New York gold, reverb and all! This is the old 950 WBBF (now WROC).

This was obviously recorded on a wideband AM receiver – those were the norm back in the 1960s at a full 16khz wide, and there was a thunderstorm or two somewhere in the area judging by the static crashes in the background. Notice the level of bass response with the music. Could have been the tone was set to bass. We’d love to guess the brand table radio this was captured with…

You’ll get a full newscast from June 1966, then Rob France begins his show, with one break after the news before this aircheck comes to a close.

5 Comments

Actually, this aircheck is probably from July of 1967, and I am quite sure that the heavy bass on the music in this aircheck is from repeated dubbing of copies. I have a copy of this aircheck on a cassette myself that I received way back in 1987, and on that cassette there was nowhere near as much bass in the aircheck as on your copy. I wish I could replace your copy with mine, but unfortunately because I am currently living in a single room of a boarding house, by necessity all of my taqpes are in storage at a friend’s house about forty miles away.

But notice Ron France giving the totally incorrect year for the song Up Tight by Stevie Wonder. He said it was from 1962, and that was even before Fingertips Part 2 became a hit. 1962 was actually the year he was signed to Motown and his very earliest recording weren’t successful at all, and have only recently been released again on his CD anthologies. I would sure love to get a hold of PAMS series 14, Dramatic Signatures features the slide console guitar of big band leader Alvino Rey for WBBF. I’ve been looking for that particular jingle package since the mid seventies.f

Ron DeFrance was a DJ before being a TV guy, but once on ch 13 he and Jerry Carr worked weekends on BBF. Phil Murray a “DJ” on WBFB,(BBF-FM) jumped to ch 13 to host the 6pm movie I graduated HS in 1974-I cut my teeth on BBF, WAXC, WKBW and CHUM, CKLW & WABC(at night) send me any BBF airchecks you can….